NHS Crisis

If you can afford private medical insurance and have it then you should use private gps and private hospitals and treatment paid privately by your insurance company. It's laughable that the NHS is still a universal service it should be a service for those who need it and can't pay. Remember when everyone used to get child benefit. Granted emergency and ambulances will always and rightly take you to hospital but otherwise.....

AA Gill for example was treated by the NHS, he chose to do so but I am sure he can afford private medical care and should have been treated privately and had it paid for privately by an insurance company.

I am not criticising him by the way , I liked the chap but it is an example of people who are wealthy but think they should be treated by the NHS.

Equally health tourists should pay and it should be enforced.

The policy of ambulance crews not being able to go back out until the patient is admitted to a and e is ridiculous. it's the most bonkers system. It just ties patients and ambulance crews up.

Also some people need to man up and stop going to a and e with a cold or sore thumb.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Some interesting stats on hospital beds per 1000 people by country:

Japan - 13.4
Germany - 8.27
Hungary - 7.17
France - 6.37
Slovakia - 6.06
Estonia - 4.87
Switzerland - 4.63
Italy - 3.42
UK - 2.95
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Thanks PB
It's also interesting that the Sustainability and Transformstion Plans for local Health Services call for a further reduction of up to a third our hospital beds. The decision making is being dictated by planned financial cuts.
 
Ifwecouldjust....... said:
Because you're one step away from the American System where you are charged for the midwife to pass you your baby after giving birth....charged for oxygen being on standby (even if you don't use it) charged 40 times the actual cost of medicine available in the uk. kicked off the private healthcare plan once you submit a large claim and then find you can't get alternative cover thats affordable or covers pre existing medical conditions.....

The very principal of insurance is that all contribute so that those who suffer a loss will get sorted. Our government are withholding £30 billion of cash from the NHS and watching it collapse whilst they happily use their BUPA medical insurance if they or their families need care. There would be a lot more money if the government had ring fenced and protected it rather than wasting it
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When have I mentioned insurance based? I haven't and I am not advocating it.

I think there should be an NHS butbi think the scope of what it does, and how services are actually delivered, should be looked at.
 
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Chippy_boy said:
Some fair points.

But on the other hand, outsourcing of work, works in other scenarios where similar challenges exist. For example, when a bus operator takes on a franchise, they have to pick up the unprofitable routes as well as the cash cows. Clearly the problem with analogies is that you can only take them so far. (And in your example, I don't see why the outsourced knee contract couldn't mandate that the service provider pays for ALL knee operations and pays the NHS back for ones it can't handle, at a rate that compensates the NHS adequately). So I am not suggesting it's the same, nor that there would be no challenges in further privatisation, but I believe it can be made to work to a greater extent than 6% of the services.

And what's the alternative? More and more and more money and keep everything the same? Really?
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No, the alternative is we as nation invest the same percentage of GDP into the NHS and social care as the Germans and Scandinavians do. How much we spend as a nation is a political decision. If politicians or anyone else says 'there isn't the money' then it's hugely misleading. If the money was available to create the system in 1948 it's definitely available now. What's lacking is political will.

One of the great success of the NHS is that it cuts out the transaction costs and perverse incentives that are associated with insurance based systems. Unfortunately building a system based on competition within the NHS itself has not helped in this regard but its still very efficient and could be made more so by bringing together commissioners and providers. The architecture of the 2012 legislation is largely being ignored by lots of areas that are starting to do this. The bigger problem is bringing in social care but it could be done.

Opponents of the concept of the NHS always say its the system that is the problem but there's no evidence for that. It's all about how much you pay and how well run a hospital, a primary care service, or a community provider is. Every country has health scandals and poorly performing hospitals. It's worth remembering that we're the only nation in the world that has a four hour A&E target and even struggling hospitals managed to get the majority of patients through in this time. Germany has much longer hospital bed stays than most other equivalent countries because German hospitals are paid on a per day basis, rather than an outcomes system. The point being that wastage can be found in every system.

Even in Germany, a bastion of social democracy, there is two tier system. Well paid public servants and the middle classes get an excellent personalised service but that's not the case for the poorest who are often the most vulnerable. One of the unseen successes of our system is that we don't over treat and over test which, again, is commonplace in insurance based systems where it suits everyone to provide services for the money paid even though there is no clinical justification for it.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
LOL. Last night you said a universe healthcare system was a privilege and that we had no right to expect someone else to care for us. Are you Jeremy Corbyn?
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LOL what?

How is saying universal healthcare is a privilege in any way contradicting saying that we should have an NHS? Answer: it isn't.

I'd expect you would be able to understand such a basic piece of logic.

Being given pies is a privilege but that doesn't mean I want to get rid of pies; I like pies! Equally I don't go around banging on about my right to free pies.
 
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BlueHammer85 said:
Anyone find the NHS like politics in general just goes round and round in a loop ?
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Yes both labour and the Tories have had several stabs at it without too much success, it does seem unless money is spent, it is used wisely and the great British public change their ways it will go from crisis to crisis.

Good luck wth that
 
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